Young Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Scent often has its way of transporting us to bygone chapters of our past, as this week’s featured poet, Siena Stanley of Bristol, would attest. With the smell of lavender perfume suspended in the air, her narrator reimagines a winsome moment once shared with her late grandmother.
Lavender, a piano, and you
By Siena Stanley, 15, of Bristol
Dried lavender,
fresh lavender,
growing lavender,
scents of lavender
waft through your whole house,
relaxing my every muscle.
Soft piano music comes from the center of the house,
gentle and smooth,
greeting my ears with a soothing,
continuous hello and welcome.
I can hear your fingers gliding softly over
the keys of the grand piano,
hands placing your fingers in
seemingly effortless grace
that can only be established with
years upon years of practice.
Your laugh floats delicately atop
the music,
interweaving with the notes
to create a beautiful harmony.
I enter the room, and a smile
easily slides onto your wonderful face.
“Good morning,” your kind expression says
without you even having to open your mouth.
I come sit next to you
and lean on your warm shoulder.
Your fingers cease their perpetual movement,
only for a brief second,
as you lean over and wrap your arms
around me.
Time seems to slow
and I am aware of every single
sensation.
I am aware of the sound of your heartbeat.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
I feel my heart slow down its pace
to fall into perfect sync with yours,
creating yet another symphony of rhythms.
I am aware of the feeling of our skin touching,
arm and arm,
head and shoulder,
hand and back.
And the scent of lavender is even stronger now,
clearly coming from your perfume.
Its familiar tendrils envelop me
in a soft, flowery cloud.
I take a deep breath and inhale all these feelings
into my whole body.
You lean back slowly,
breaking our embrace.
You place your fingers back on the keys
and look over at me.
I smile at you
and rest my hand lightly on the keys as well.
I know what we are going to play.
It is the same thing we always play.
You start,
and soon I join in,
high notes and low notes winding together
in a perfect melody.
My hands move in a much less
graceful way.
After all, I don’t have much practice.
You press the key to finish
the final bar of the song.
Slowly you fade away,
until you are nothing
but thin air
once again.
The smile leaves my face,
turning downward into a slight frown.
It felt so real
that I’d thought for a minute
you weren’t really gone.
“Goodbye, Granny,” I whisper,
choking back a sob.
